Douthat notes the way Graham and Martin Luther King Jr. used the idea of the kingdom of God in different ways. “Where Martin Luther King used eschatological language as a spur to political change, Graham used eschatology to emphasize the limits of politics.”

Of course, a Christian eschatology ought to both spur change and limit the possibilities of such change. Of such is the biblical tension between the “already” and the “not yet” of the Kingdom of Christ.

Russell Moore is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the moral and public policy agency of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.READ MORE